Original publish date March 24, 2022. https://weeklyview.net/2022/03/24/elwoods-airport-restaurant-the-worlds-only-fly-in-drive-in/
A couple of weeks ago, my wife Rhonda and I drove about 40 miles north of Irvington to Elwood to visit the world’s first (and only) fly-in drive-in restaurant. Resting just northeast of the intersection of Indiana 37 and 13, the Airport Restaurant is located at 10130 State Road 37 on what was once the Elwood Airport. The planes are long gone, and diners no longer rub elbows with pilots, but the Airport Restaurant is still the place where all the locals eat.
The airport was founded just after World War II by Elwood residents Don and Georgia Orbaugh. It featured two grass runways, measuring 2,243 feet and 2,076 feet. The sod landing strips accommodated single-engine planes and their specialty was known as the $100 hamburger. The restaurant did not charge $100 for burgers, but for pilots, that’s what they became. “By the time you get in your airplane, fill it up with gas, and fly a 100 miles, it’s a $100 hamburger,” the old pilot’s joke went. Don and Georgia Orbaugh owned and operated the airport for 56 years before it passed to daughters Ann Brewer and Donna Ewing.
In 1952, “Sullivan’s Airport Restaurant” gained statewide attention when it opened an ice cream shack staffed by pretty young carhops. By 1953, a dining room was added to the shack, and young girls wearing tiny green uniforms with boxy marching band hats served curbside customers in their cars and pilots in their planes. Truth be told, the airport was really a “touch-and-go” facility where pilots practiced their landings and takeoffs. Most pilots only flew into the airport to visit the restaurant and ogle the carhops. By the end of the 50s, the novelty was over. There are a few photos (and at least one postcard) surviving of the Airport Restaurant during its heyday. The photos show the young waitresses in their carhop uniforms and the postcard pictures one of them standing on the wing of an airplane serving food to the pilots inside the cockpit.
Al Swineforth, the current owner of the Airport Restaurant, has a long history in the restaurant business. “I moved to Elwood in 1970. I was a General Manager for Darden Foods in Anderson for 22 years when I retired,” he stated. For those who don’t know, Darden’s family of restaurants features some of the most recognizable and successful brands in full-service dining — Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and Cheddar’s to name a few — serving more than 320 million guests annually in over 1,800 restaurants located across North America. Al smiled wryly, then said, “The day I retired, I was driving north on 13 when I stopped at 37 and saw the old Wheeler’s truck stop. I stayed retired for a total of four hours.”
Anyone who has ever driven through northern Hamilton County on State Road 37 knows the old “Wheelers” building. The truck stop opened in 1940 as “Scotty’s Inn.” This was back when SR 37 was the main route between Fort Wayne and Indy, so Scotty’s became a well-known stop for truckers, local farmers, and travelers alike. It featured gas pumps, a restaurant on the main floor, and “tourist rooms” upstairs. Swineforth reopened the restaurant after it sat derelict for many years following a devastating kitchen fire in the 1970s.
Swineforth recalled that the place was a mess when he took it over. “Oh the stories that building could tell,” he said. “Those rooms upstairs were rented to truckers by the hour,” he whispered with a wink. “You know, Elvis Presley came through there once back in the 1950s.” Swineforth ran his restaurant from 1993 to 1999 before the ancient infrastructure finally forced him to shut it down. The building remained vacant for nearly two decades before it reopened in 2018 as Mercantile 37.
After Swineforth closed his restaurant at the old Wheelers, he landed in Elwood. “I rent the building from the Orbaugh daughters. I own the name and everything within these walls, but the 74-acre airport property remains in the Orbaugh family,” Al noted. “Every Governor since Otis Bowen has stopped in here. Well, except Evan Bayh, he was never here. Mike Pence came in here all the time before he became Vice-President.” Al said, “He used to hold meetings right over there at that corner table.” Swineforth recalls one Governor’s visit in particular. “Frank O’Bannon came in here once for a meet-and-greet. We were running planes then and there were a couple of pilots in here. The Governor’s bodyguards went out and pulled the car up to leave and while they were gone the Governor said that he’d really like to take a plane ride. Pilot John Ward told him his plane was right outside and the Governor took off out the back door and was circling the runways within minutes.” Al closed by saying, “When those bodyguards came back in to get him, you should have seen the looks on their faces when I pointed to the sky and told them ‘there he goes.’ You couldn’t get away with that nowadays.”
The airport closed for good on September 1, 2008. The former runways were leased to a local farmer, who has since planted them in crops. Statistics from the previous year showed that the airport had 2,604 general aviation aircraft operations, an average of 217 per month. When I asked him how it affected his business, Al replied, “I lost $100,000 overnight.” That wasn’t the only calamity Swineforth had to weather. Like most restaurants, the COVID-19 pandemic nearly devastated the Airport Restaurant. “We never closed during COVID,” he stated. “Oh we shuttered the dining room but we were open for curbside and delivery.” It might surprise some to learn that Swineforth thinks the pandemic actually helped his business. “The community really came through for us. I think they appreciated that we never closed. Our business picked up after we reopened.”
I visited the Airport Restaurant on a weekday and was immediately greeted by owner Al Swineforth. Al insisted that we have lunch before we sat down to chat, his treat. We were seated in the dining room right next to the fireplace. Our waitress Holly Fettig greeted us warmly and informed us that she had worked there since she was 18 years old. “My mom worked here for a few years before I started,” Holly said. “I’ve been here for over 25 years now.” I question that statement because she looks like she would still get carded in any bar she found herself in today.
The menu is full of so many different dishes that it is hard to zero in on any one particular selection. The restaurant fare runs the gamut from Hoosier staples like grilled tenderloins, onion rings, fried green tomatoes, and double-decker hamburgers to steak, chicken and noodles, or fish dinners. Holly informed us that they are “famous for our elk burgers.” Rhonda had broccoli cheddar soup and a grilled ham & cheese sandwich and I opted for a giant hamburger, fries, and chili. Next time, I’m trying that elk burger. We were not disappointed. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner with homemade pies also available.
After lunch, we sat down with Al and Holly and explained the reason for our visit. Turns out that the restaurant has a family connection. My mother-in-law, Kathy Hudson, worked at the restaurant in 1968 at a time when it was being managed by my wife’s great-grandfather, Virgil Edgar Musick. Rhonda’s dad, Ron Musick, has told us for years about his grandfather and his restaurant and recalled helping with the bookkeeping when he was in high school. “The restaurant was called Musick’s Airport Restaurant back then. Granddad was a musician. He played slide guitar in a band along with running the restaurant.” Ronnie said, “Seemed like he was playing on the radio every weekend on WOWO up in Fort Wayne. He backed up some pretty big-name musicians in his day.”
Kathy told us that she was working as a waitress there when Bobby Kennedy’s campaign flew into Elwood in May of 1968. “I don’t remember Bobby being there, but his advance guys were there, all dressed up in suits and dark sunglasses. They asked me if I wanted to go for an airplane ride and I told them, ‘Well, only if my husband can come along.’ The advance men told her, ‘Sure, he can sit on the wing.’ Did I mention that Kathy, former homecoming queen at Anderson Highland High School back in 1964, is quite the looker? The fireplace table was important because Rhonda’s only memory of the restaurant centers around a photo of her and grandmother Nina Pace standing in front of it. Rhonda told Al, “But I remember it as red brick, not white.” Al explained, “Yes it was red but we painted it white when we remodeled the place several years ago.”
The planes don’t come here anymore and the runways were plowed over years ago. However, evidence of the airport survives in the many pictures of planes, parked on the grassy runways, taken back in the 1960s and 70s that now line the walls of the restaurant. My father-in-law, Keith Hudson, remembered tooling around Elwood back when it was a working airport. “We used to cut through here by driving up the runway back then. I still eat there from time to time.” When I mentioned Hud’s name to Al, he said, “Oh yeah, I know Keith from Bernie’s bar in Frankton.” Turns out that before he ran the Airport Restaurant, Virgil Musick ran the 128-club in Frankton. Seems like Al Swineforth knows everyone in Madison County. And as for those shortcuts through a working airport runway, don’t worry Hud, I think the statute of limitations has run on that by now.
A week after our visit to Jim and Cathy Albright, the United States Supreme Court lifted the ban on executions at the Terre Haute penitentiary located a mere three miles from their front door. At the time of this writing, there had been three executions in four days. While there were never any State sanctioned executions at Alcatraz, there was not much rehabilitation taking place there either. Convicts were different back then, some actually viewed it as a profession. When asked about the convicts of today, Jim simply shakes his head and says, “They were more like professional convicts ya know ‘I did the crime, I’ll do the time’. It’s just not the same. It’s a different world now.”
In 1970, two years after King’s assassination, Hoover told a Time reporter. “King was very suave and smooth. He sat right there where you’re sitting and said he never criticized the FBI. I said, ‘Mr. King’-I never called him reverend- ‘stop right there. You’re lying….If you ever say anything that’s a lie again, I’ll brand you a liar again.’ Strange to say, he never attacked the Bureau again for as long as he lived.” Nobody else present that day remembered that confrontation-not Young, not Abernathy, not even Deputy Director Deke DeLoach, who was taking notes that afternoon.
Alan E. Hunter 